How do you support other siblings when a teen decides they are trans

Why have we [not] had this conversation before on MN of all places over the years?!

Agree wholeheartedly, Redtoothbrush. It is almost like a Gestalt switch. Regarding the suggestions in a recent Site Stuff thread about possible new or name-changed topics for support in relation to gender issues, I think that what we need is a topic called something like "Families of gender-questioning adolescents". That would give more space for the issues to be discussed supportively, with due regards for how the situation affects the whole family, and how it can be a manifestation of autism, mental health problems and so on. @kellymumsnet

The evidence that such a topic would accumulate would be so so revealing of the unmet sibling needs, similar to the needs that are acknowledged in that piece about sibling anorexia support

Not acceptable.

Jesus Christ @WanOvaryKenobi

How is that helpful?

Wow.

I hadn't quite anticipated getting this and the other responses in a similar vein on this thread.

Why have we had this conversation before on MN of all places over the years?!

We've had so many repetitive conversations about flaming toilets and how awful you are if you don't affirm and yet I don't think we've ever really got around to this one to this extent.

It really makes you think and wonder why.

Last night's deletion made me wobble and I nearly didn't double down on trying to repeat what I'd said, but I am really glad I did now. I just felt it was really important.

From various responses I think this is the tip of the iceberg in recognising 'The Grenade Effect' that's essential for all parties within a family.

Affirmation is not a neutral act.

Wonderful post at 10.11, @CautiousLurker . Thanks so much for that honesty and insight. xx

Reflecting on what I say above about similarities with anorexia (funny how it now seems to be coming out that girls with autism are much more likely than their peers to become anorexic...) I looked up to see whether there was any advice for parents to help siblings.

The first hit I found was this
https://www.oxfordhealth.nhs.uk/camhs/carers/ed/parents-supporting-siblings/
It's NHS guidance for Oxford. I've C+P because I think it's really interesting to this discussion as a whole. I've need read this nor looked it up before and I find it particularly interesting given what I've already posted on this thread:

Advice for parents supporting siblings

Eating disorders can lead to huge changes within the family and affect day to day life for everyone. Meal times can become tense and ‘normal’ family activities such as trips out or holidays may be cancelled or become less enjoyable.

Supporting siblings
Parents may understandably direct a lot of their time and attention to the child with the eating disorder. Often siblings describe experiencing a wide range of feelings including confusion, anger, guilt, jealousy and worry. It is important to acknowledge that siblings may be facing the stresses of school friendships and finding their own identity, as well as coping with the illness of their brother or sister.

Siblings play an important role in the lives of those with an eating disorder and often have a part in the recovery process. Family based treatment will generally involve siblings, whether that is within individual family appointments or multi-family workshops where several families join together. Siblings can contribute in different ways to their brother or sister’s recovery including providing friendship, support, a sense of normality and being models of normal, relaxed eating.

It is important that siblings are supported during what can be a difficult time. We have put together a few top tips for helping to support a sibling of someone with an eating disorder. We have also developed a section for siblings on how to support their brother or sister with an eating disorder – you may want to recommend they take a look.

Top tips for parents and other caregivers
1 Share what you know about eating disorders with siblings. Provide them with age-appropriate information on the eating disorder diagnosis and treatment. Give them the opportunity to ask questions, you may not be able to answer all of them, that’s OK. Having an understanding of what is happening to their brother or sister and why they may be acting the way they are can help them to cope with what is happening and reduce any blame siblings may feel.

2 Remind siblings that their brother or sister is being supported by you and a professional care team. Siblings may try to take on extra responsibility for caring for their brother or sister and this can cause siblings to feel under pressure and may lead to unnecessary anxiety. Let them know that what their sibling needs most is their brother or sister to act as normally as possible.

3 Ensure you make time to spend one-to-one quality time with your other children away from the eating disorder and focus solely on them and what’s happening in their lives.

4 Spend time together with the whole family away from the eating disorder, this may be difficult but taking ‘time out’ as a family can be really beneficial. This may be playing a board game or watching a film together.

5 Talk with siblings about how they are feeling, both about the eating disorder and their life in general. Often siblings will try to hide their feelings from their parents due to fear of burdening them. Let them know it’s ok and normal to feel angry, worried, sad or resentful in this situation.

6 Encourage siblings to speak to someone they trust about how they are feeling. That may be a close friend, someone from school or a family friend. They will be experiencing a lot of different emotions and it can be a very confusing time, it is important they have someone who they can confide in. Siblings may experience anxiety or other mental health difficulties which may need professional support, if you feel this is the case, speak to your GP about what support services they or school might be able to offer.

7 Siblings may be invited to attend appointments with CAMHS. Discuss this with the sibling; let them know it can be a good opportunity for them to learn about the eating disorder and what treatment and support is being offered to their brother or sister.

8 Some siblings may not want to know about the eating disorder or be involved in treatment; this can be a normal response. It is important to be sensitive to this, however continue to ‘listen out’ for any signs of curiosity.

9 Encourage siblings as best you can to continue to attend social groups/after school clubs. It is important that they continue to live as ‘normally’ as possible and have time away from the eating disorder to recharge.

10 Acknowledge that family life has changed and that life at home may be feeling very difficult. Let them know that although you may be spending a lot of time with their brother/sister that you still love them just as much.

11 Take care of yourself! Ensure that you have someone who you can speak to; children are able to pick up on stress in the family and allowing yourself ‘down time’ can help to reduce burn out that can affect the whole family.

Now I don't think it's all transferable but I do think there's a lot there of use. I also think it's significant that it explicitly says " It is important to acknowledge that siblings may be facing the stresses of school friendships and finding their own identity, as well as coping with the illness of their brother or sister." And that it states that some siblings will be offered CAHMS support by virtue of the impact of having a sibling who is anorexic, showing the degree of strain it can place on the family.

We are starting to see acknowledgement, thanks to CASS, that young people who identify as trans are often people with complex mental health needs - and the NHS in the above guidance acknowledges that siblings with mental health related needs can also need support.

We also have some data to suggest that anorexia rates have dropped as rates of trans identifying children (particularly girls) has risen. Given we also have the above mentioned link with autism there's everything to suggest they are actually one and the same cohort just manifesting in a slightly different way.

The mere existence of this document makes me raise eyebrows about why there isn't similar - which includes not wishing to affirm, in line with CASS and WORIADS developments - for parents with children who identify as trans and their siblings.

There is a massive gap here.

It is so so moving and informative to read your posts, @RedToothBrush . I feel furious on your behalf and I regret that I focussed in my earlier post so much on my son (identifying for a while as trans, eventually discovered to be in the grip of psychosis) rather than his sibling (which was the essence of the OP's concerns). Of course the whole arc of my son's illness over many years was incredibly challenging for his sibling in lots of ways. But I can see how much more challenging your sibling experience was, because of the immense pressures involved in being expected to affirm.
In the event, my son's trans identification didn't impact on his sibling, but I can well see how it would have done if the situation hadn't evolved along a different trajectory.
While my son was experiencing himself as trans, he very insistently asked me to purchase online hormones for him (it is too complicated for me to explain why -- the demand was a consequence of his being in some ways massively articulate and informed but in other ways knocked over by the limitations imposed by his not-yet-diagnosed psychosis).
During his earlier teens, he had always been massively rigid when he had demands that I did not meet. Meltdowns, confrontations, to the point of physically hassling me blocking me from leaving his presence. So I was desperately apprehensive about what the consequences would be of my refusing to buy online hormones. I even went to Relate to have some counselling about it. In the event, his psychosis shaped his actions more than his autism did, and he isolated himself completely, didn't behave confrontationally. But the fear of confrontation dominated my life for a month or so.

Thank you for that amazing honest and insightful post.

Apologies meant to quote you @CautiousLurker

Somewhere along the line she realised she had effectively been terrorising us and that despite this we had stuck by her. She finally realised that though we set no store by the trans stuff we nonetheless unconditionally loved her - AND her brother. There’s been sea change in her behaviour, MH, physical health, and she is now forward looking to uni and her dream career albeit understanding that she might want/need to live at home during her degree and for a while afterwards until she feels well enough to go solo.

That's really encouraging to hear, and that your son's needs are being met as well.

I guess there's also an element of your parental desire to tell your kid if they are doing something ludicrous because for their own sake you want to protect them!

That's an element that I would rein in. Autistic or not he's 19 which is the right age to make a tit of himself and learn from it without his parents chipping in.

My DC experimented for a while with doing "the voice", started after someone did a double take when DC spoke, and following online videos (anything and everything is on Youtube somewhere!) DC seems to have dropped it now.

If it were me I’d stop worrying about what others think

I try not to. Already had lots of practice, what with DC having autism.

Support them, take them shopping and help them find their style.

DC has never wanted to shop for clothes. Didn't before, doesn't now. "Transition" is not a personality transplant. Most of DC's outer clothes are gifts and underclothes are ordered online.

Talk to them about being in women only spaces and encourage them to use gender neutral toilets.

You reckon? 19 year olds are not known for their positive response to parental lectures or to being told by Mum what toilet to use.

Take yourself out of it, don’t mention you don’t like the name.

Yes, that's wise.

How much do you want a relationship with your child vs how much do you want to be right?

I'm firmly on the "relationship with child" side but OP has her other children to consider as well.

No. It's a parent's job to parent. Very often that means saying no, guiding children away from the wrong path.

True, but the job at 19 is different from the job at 9. The scope to "guide" is limited when you are "parenting" an adult.

@andfinallyhereweare

How much do you want a relationship with your child vs how much do you want to be right?

HTH

Had to re read my post there to spot the emotional blackmail? Still can’t see it.

Ah well.

Here

How much do you want a relationship with your child vs how much do you want to be right?

@RedToothBrush thank you for your post at 8.35 yesterday. I really appreciate the sharing. It makes me feel a little more confident that making sure my younger son’s needs were prioritised was the right move for us as a family.

At the time we did sense that DD felt that DS was the ‘favourite’ and that there was sibling rivalry involved and, on a subconscious level, a desire to dislodge her brother. There were eventually quite a few family rows where we pointed out that his needs had always been secondary to hers (sitting in the car for 90-120mins both ends of the day to drive her to the single sex private school she wanted, rather thenca the coed one 4miles away; the inability for him to attend any after school clubs/have play dates for the same reason). One day I just snapped and said that anyone looking in from the outside would assume she was the favourite as the entire effing household revolved around her for nearly a decade. Privately we always reassured him, privately we told him how much we loved him and that her needs didn’t trump his, that he was allowed to feel angry, that if he felt anxious/sad he must some to us. But we nonetheless missed his autism until he was 15, missed his heightened levels of anxiety for years before seeking treatment, and didn’t step in soon enough to avoid a minor disaster with his GCSEs because everyone was telling us DD had decided to end her life before her 18th birthday so we remained on suicide watch 24/7 for years.

We now actively and explicitly rank his needs equal to hers - she knows that whatever she needs and asks for will only be provided if it does not conflict with his needs, or our own. I could kick myself for not doing this sooner. Ironically, DS is happier, has experienced much less anxiety/fewer acute migraines over the last year… and DD has come to understand that she operates within a family where all 4 parties’ needs have to be weighted. Her desisting began around the time this came to a head. My DD is a good, loving (vulnerable and impressionable) kid, but her dad had a lifelong debilitating diagnosis coupled with cancerous polyps, my MH was so acutely eroding that we discussed my moving out, and my DS just soldiered on not wanting to make waves.

Somewhere along the line she realised she had effectively been terrorising us and that despite this we had stuck by her. She finally realised that though we set no store by the trans stuff we nonetheless unconditionally loved her - AND her brother. There’s been sea change in her behaviour, MH, physical health, and she is now forward looking to uni and her dream career albeit understanding that she might want/need to live at home during her degree and for a while afterwards until she feels well enough to go solo.

I’ve lain awake at night feeling like shit for not meeting my son’s needs quickly enough but he is, without doubt, the most kind, caring and loving boy. Experiencing all this seems to have made him more compassionate and selfless than many boys his own age, though I worry he will struggle to set his boundaries in relationships when he is older and feel strong enough to communicate and advocate for his own needs. We’re working on that, though.

Had to re read my post there to spot the emotional blackmail? Still can’t see it.

Ah well.

The Cass Review is like finally some grown ups have stepped in, which of course is why there are all the howling tantrums from trans rights activists.

No. It's a parent's job to parent. Very often that means saying no, guiding children away from the wrong path.

When 4 out of 10 of the kids in my house are "trans" when my son's friends are round, it's abundantly clear to me that this is a social contagion. Not something innate.

I think what I find striking about all this is that it's all women being expected to validate, flatter, help, put their feelings to one side. Sisters are expected to be ok with it even to the point that their brother copies their name, the mum is supposed to enable the male child to woman better (which of course he can't). It's never clearer that women are support animals.

Thank god for Cass. Which literally says this and is also helping to open up the necessary conversations.

What Gatherley said. It does no one any favours to pretend otherwise.

Lots of people in this situation are very fragile, insecure, self-obsessed, controlling and desperate for validation (whatever that means). It's because this is a mental health condition. If only we could all accept and agree that we could actually make progress and have sensible conversations.

This is nothing more than an ideological response, gendered intelligence are not an organisation that any parent who cares about their child should not be touching with a barge pole.

Your son needs to gain an understanding as to why he feels the way he does, it is OK to tell him he is not female and that he is male. He needs exploratory therapy, more than likely he is just gay and his autism is playing a part in this decision. This is an excellent book which should prove a good resource to you. When Kids Say They're Trans: A Guide for Thoughtful Parents eBook : O'Malley, Stella, Ayad, Sasha, Marchiano, Lisa: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

And another one with the emotional blackmail.

My brother went nuts at the suggestion of going shopping fwiw. (See previous point about taking it as a slight and being deeply insecure).